![]() ![]() Sarah Knowles’ production design is precise and evocative, right down to the look of the laundry room at the beach house, and the tattered copy of Arthur Knight’s “The Liveliest Art” displayed at the second-hand bookstore. Tech package impresses without undue slickness. Brooks”) suggests he could be at the start of interesting film-acting career marked by the smart balancing of lead and supporting roles. If Dane Cook merits specific mention, it’s because his fine work here (much like his under-rated turn in “Mr. Supporting performances are aces across the board. Binoche is charming throughout - her accent is attributed to her character’s many and varied travels - but she’s most endearing when Marie and Dan are sharing their own private jokes about their complicated situation. “Dan” works best when the humor flows directly from the basic set-up and the interacting central characters. (Moreover, the film isn’t the rollicking laff-riot it’s being be sold as in coming-attraction trailers that could turn off many of the very ticketbuyers who may enjoy it most.) ![]() But when she and Carell have a kind of dance-floor duel with Binoche and Cook, the scene, while undeniably funny, seems oddly odd of sync with the rest of the pic. It’s not that Blunt goes over the top - she stops short of that. “Dan in Real Life” leans toward the obvious only when Dan is pushed by his mother into a blind date with a former classmate (Emily Blunt), a stunning sexpot who arouses Marie’s barely contained jealousy. Yet instead of generating elaborate deceptions, slapstick farce and other broadly comic antics, this plot device leads to richly amusing incidents of anxiety, indecision and embarrassment, as Marie and Dan try to hide their mutual attraction - and deny it to themselves and each other - while unavoidably close in a crowded house. The budding attraction is interrupted by a major complication: Marie turns out to be the visiting girlfriend of Mitch (Dane Cook), Dan’s fitness-instructor brother. But their opening conversational gambits, involving recommended reading material, come off as fresh and funny. Here and elsewhere in “Dan in Real Life,” Hedges and co-scripter Pierce Gardner demonstrate a beguiling ability to take intriguing detours while covering familiar territory. So she sends Dan off to buy newspapers in a nearby town - where, at a second-hand bookstore, he meets Maria (Juliette Binoche), who gets him to open up. Dan’s mother (Dianne Wiest) quickly realizes it might be good to separate father and daughters for a bit. In his own life, however, Dan is uptight and overprotective as the widowed father of three young daughters: teenage Jane ( Alison Pill), who’s seldom allowed to use her new driver’s license middle child Cara (Brittany Robertson), who’s much too young in Dan’s view to have a boyfriend, much less an ardent suitor and fourth-grader Lilly (Marlene Lawston), who’s forgiving, but not entirely uncritical, of her father’s way-uncool attitude.ĭan and his daughters aren’t exactly bonding blissfully when they arrive at his parents’ Rhode Island beach house for a semi-annual gathering of brothers and sisters, spouses and offspring. In his column, Dan confidently dispenses advice to readers with burning questions about love, life and family matters. Indeed, it’s not at all difficult to imagine, say, Daniel Auteuil in the lead role winningly played here by Steve Carell.Ĭarell hits all the right notes while running the gamut from propriety to spontaneity as Dan Burns, writer of a newspaper column that gives the pic its title. It’s intended as high praise to note that, in sharp contrast to most other recent American-made laffers, there’s a decidedly European air to Hedges’ effort. ![]()
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